The Age of Light

I find it interesting that the topic of this week’s reading was Surrealism and Dada but none of the three readings explicitly mentions either style of art. Maybe I am missing the point altogether!

I am choosing to respond to the piece by Man Ray because it had the biggest shock factor, although I think it was mostly over my head. I questioned the opening idea of art being an “idyllic occupation” that should only be employed after the “more vital problems of existence” have been solved (167). But then, a few sentences later, one finds out that the opening was really a counterargument to his main point. Ray says, “All progress results from an intense individual desire to improve the immediate present” (167). This statement glorifies the individual and romanticizes their role in progress. Contrastingly, he expresses the sentiment that larger groups, like race and class, thwart development. He says there is an incapacity of race and class to “improve itself” and “to learn from previous errors in history”(167). He compares race and class in society to style in art. Ray says, “Race and class, like styles, then become irrelevant, while the emotion of the human individual becomes universal,” which further suggests his affinity towards individualism (167). I do not know anything about Man Ray or the time he was alive, but it seems to me that he is not in favor of the strict boundaries that define different styles of art. He would agree more with the romantic idea brought up by Franz Roh, which says that “everyone who has something to say will find a way of saying it” (156). He uses the word desire in interesting ways. I think this is part of the reason the piece is so hard. It reminds me of the Benjamin article. The word desire, just like cult or aura, is not extremely difficult, but the author divorces its normal connotation and attaches unfamiliar meanings to it. He says, “the creator dealing in human values allows the subconscious forces to filter through him, colored by his own selectivity, which is universal human desire” (168). It seems to me like Ray uses the word desire to explain the subconscious. It is the desire of the artist, rather than a specific artistic style, that moves the viewer to action and makes art more than an “idyllic occupation.”